The Look and the Leap
by ejosephinemachine
Summary: Seventh year at Hogwarts has it's own problems, and it's even more complicated when you're trying to work your way up through the ranks of a highly secret Order of witches and wizards fighting the greatest threat known to the Wizarding World. Sometimes, a girl just needs a little midnight flight with a boy she is pretending not to fancy. Yeah, that ought to make things easier.
I felt bad that my big story ended so abruptly, so here's a little bit more. I wrote it before I finished Remember and Forget but this part takes place in their seventh year, and so James and Lily have had a bit more time to come to terms with their feelings. It's short and sweet, I hope. It's still me writing though, so it's obviously going to be unnecessarily painstaking in getting them together. Hope you enjoy!

Lily had long since accepted her feelings for James Potter. She had, after a long period of denial and deflection that had covered most of her sixth year at school, accepted and admitted a certain sort of affection for him.

Alright, she fancied him.

She knew it, and her friends knew it, though they were sworn to secrecy because, crucially, James did not know it. She had made a decision not to tell him, out of fear of ruining their friendship, fear of him rejecting her and, if she was honest, fear of him admitting feelings of the same sort. It was safer just to joke and be friendly and to tell herself, again and again, that it would never turn into anything. She would soon leave Hogwarts, and would be faced with a set of obstacles and challenges that James wouldn't. Yes, they both wanted to fight, and yes, Lily could think of no one that she would trust more by her side in a fight, and yes, they would both be fighting the same enemies with the Order but the fact remained that Lily was in the perilous position of being a Muggleborn witch in a time of Pureblood mania. When you were facing down so many enemies, and enemies of such power, friendships and alliances were a help, romance was a hindrance.

That fact did not make it any easier to ignore the distinct tingling sensation that Lily got at the base of her skull whenever James brushed a hair away from her face, or touched her on the arm to get her attention. As if he had to try. Lily, ever since admitting to herself that she fancied him, had been living in a heightened state of James awareness. She had, at first, told herself that the best idea was to distance herself from James, to keep their friendship but to isolate her feelings from that friendship. He would be safer at a distance. However, her own fear and her impulsiveness had made her drag him into her fight, though he had been very willing to come along.

They had trudged through the cold and the doubts, down to Hogsmeade and into a fight that they were far too young to understand the enormity of. After Dumbledore had consented, and they had become members of the Order of the Phoenix, they had walked outside, down the street in the quiet, postcard scene of a village and a strange mix of happiness, relief and desire had brought them together in a kiss that Lily couldn't quite bring herself to regret. It had been soft and warm against the cold wind of the Scottish night air and it had filled her heart with a certainty. She was absolutely sure that she would not manage to be as noble and self-sacrificing as she had hoped to be when it came to James Potter. She had such plans, of distancing herself, becoming a lonely hero, while James grew apart from her and married some beautiful witch with enough Wizarding blood to make her not a threat and a pleasant enough nature to make James content and happy for the rest of his days. She would be sad, and she would miss him and she would long to be selfish and take him for her own, Lily had told herself, but she would be noble. Lily had known from the second her lips had pressed against James', if not a while before that, that she would never be able to be noble, if being without James was what noble meant.

As the months had passed, she had grown less certain. Talking with the older Order Members, in the letters that Lily had been consumed with writing, she had started to change her mind. These people all had families, husbands, wives, children, brothers, sisters, parents and they never gave any impression that isolating themselves was the right thing to do. If anything, the members - such as Marlene, Edgar, Emmeline - she wrote to, seemed to draw strength from their family, some even fought alongside them, Marlene's brother was fighting, and the whole Bones family. They saw no strength in being alone, and Lily was starting to realise that loneliness wasn't strength.

Between the political turmoil, the emotional theorising, the letter writing and the relentless stress of having several NEWTs to study for, it was no wonder that Lily felt her eyes growing heavy as she sat in the warm, plush armchair in the Gryffindor Common Room, the weight of the book in her hands growing heavier as her head rolled backwards. A warm room, comfortable seat and full stomach from the Halloween feast that she had just returned from, accompanied by the rest of Gryffindor House, all weighing considerably more than they had before dinner, were a recipe for a deep sleep and so she was not surprised when her head rolled forward and she felt jolted from a dream and noticed wearily that the lights were dimmed, the fire dying and the Common Room utterly abandoned. She yawned, her face stretching out as she kicked her legs outwards, feeling the stiff pain of sitting for too long in the one place. It was only as she lifted the book from her legs and closed it, giving up on studying for the night, that she realised that she was not alone.

He was sitting by the window, staring outwards and even though she couldn't see his face, she knew he was awake. The light of the moon, not yet full but bright in the midst of the Scottish wilderness, lit up one side of his face as he rested his head on the stone wall beside the window ledge. His legs were drawn up to his chest and he looked like a child, smaller than she expected. She wondered if he knew she was here at all, or if this was how he looked when he thought he was unobserved. She had grown used to the bravado, to the spectacle of James Potter, all the jokes and the charm and the skill, she had accepted. She had even grown to see him without that, the real boy behind all the pride, funny and kind, loyal and brave. She hadn't seen this, though. James was a lot of things to her, she had once thought him just a showy idiot, but years of experience had shown her the intelligence and the depth, she had seen him sad, and scared, but this was different. She didn't know how, he just looked vulnerable, alone and unaware. She thought about going back to sleep, about trying to leave without him knowing, but something had been changed by her observance, and, as if he could sense it, his eyes flickered lazily around the room, his head turning to meet her. His expression was soft and he looked at her in a way she never could define. It was kind, and it was affectionate, but it wasn't the same way he looked at her during the day, when they were just James and Lily, when they were friends and classmates, when they were just themselves. Only in certain moments, usually moments of quiet connection, did he look at her like this.

She didn't dare to imagine what it was, he had been doing it for months, rare occasions where they were alone and where he stopped trying to impress her. It was a nice look, she always felt the same swooping sensation when he looked at her like that.

The look stayed on his face, as he opened his mouth to speak, a slight, fond smile curling the corners of his lips.

"Oh good, you're awake..."

"I hope you weren't waiting up for me!" She raised an eyebrow, trying to look away from him. She couldn't, not whilst he stayed looking like that. It was magnetic, the pull that his hazel eyes had, shining with warmth even with only the dying embers of the fire and the distant moon to illuminate them. She could never have looked away, not now that she had come to accept her own affection for him. Even if he never felt the same way, and she knew he probably never would, she would spend her life re-thinking the moments like this, when she had been the focus of that look.

A look like that could warm a girl to her core, and last her to her dying days.

"Nah, I just couldn't... I dunno, I can't sleep."

"Unfortunately for my Charms homework, I don't have the same problem." She muttered, trying hard to make him laugh. If he laughed, it might break the spell, he would joke back at her and they would be back to James and Lily, friends, rather than whatever that look made her want to be. When he didn't say anything, when only a faint smile crossed his face and did nothing to lessen the intensity of the look, she was forced to take drastic action. Putting the book on the table beside her, she stood up, stretching her legs. At this crucial moment, her legs, perhaps in rebellion for the pain she had caused by sitting still for so long, did not what she intended, which was to retreat with a casual word up to her dormitory, to try and dispel the thoughts of 'the look' from her head. Instead, they carried her slowly towards James and, upon reaching the window, curled up opposite him on what, fortunately was a window ledge large enough for two to sit on.

Trying to salvage this situation, she fixed her gaze out the window, but the only thing that she could gain any sort of purchase on, with her entire body tingling at the closeness of James and the persistence of the look, was the moon, shining like a polished ten pence piece, silvery and rounded in the velvet black sky. The light shone on the grounds, illuminating the features of the land in the white light, but she could see none of it. She searched her brain for something to say.

"It's times like this, you just wish that you could fly, don't you?"

James said nothing, presumably thinking how odd a thing this was for a very capable witch to say. Lily could, without any drastic effort, perform a cushioning charm or a levitating charm that would float her gently to the ground, but that wasn't what she meant. "I just mean, I understand the appeal of flying, at times like this... when the air is all still and everything's quiet, and it's so dark, I can understand why you like it."

"I generally prefer the daytime for flying, but yeah, I suppose..." He shrugged, as though she had talked him into something. "D'you want to?"

"Do I want to..." She trailed off, hoping that he wasn't about to suggest what she suspected.

"Fly. I've got brooms."

"I'm aware. I'm also aware that McGonagall swore that she would slaughter us both if we broke so much as half a school rule."

James looked defeated for a moment. He had been feeling the difficulty of abiding by the demand that Professor McGonagall had made of them. She had been reluctant to allow them into the Order of the Phoenix, arguing that they were too young and it was too dangerous. She had told them that she wouldn't hesitate to punish them severely for any rule breaks, and would expect them to show great maturity and compliance with the rules to allow her to trust them with secrets of the Order. James had been straining against the boundaries placed on him. He had never been one for following rules and Remus, Peter and particularly Sirius had been unsettled and upset by the sudden change in their friend. They had moaned frequently about it, putting it down to a desire to live up to the title of Head Boy, and mocking him relentlessly for it. The recent months had not brought any change in how close they were, but James had been forced to be more covert, to plan more of their schemes and execute less, and Lily got the distinct feeling that he was still breaking rules, just being very careful not to be either caught by McGonagall or found out by Lily. He hadn't lost his appetite for stretching the rules to their breaking point though, nor his ability to talk his way around an infraction.

"Well... I think we might be alright, they rules say that we can't be in the corridors after hours, and that we can't be on the grounds after hours. Right?"

She nodded, already dreading this, though slightly relieved that 'the look' had gone, replaced by the gleeful energy of contemplating a rule breaking.

"Okay, so we won't go out into the corridor, and we won't set foot on the grounds. I've checked, that's not technically against the rules."

"I have the sinking feeling that you're speaking from experience."

He nodded, proudly.

"And how did McGonagall react to that reasoning?"

"She never found out, because it's not tech-"

"-technically against the rules." She supplied, finishing the sentence. Despite herself, and all her better judgments, she was longing to do something impulsive. She had been feeling the strain that necessarily accompanied being a NEWT student, Head Girl and member of a secret Order. She thought that she was owed one minor infringement of the rules.

She saw the light return to James' eyes as she cracked a smile and he knew he had won. She nodded, trying to look reluctant, and in a second, she was sitting on the window ledge alone. He whispered to her "Wait here!" as he darted off towards the stairs to the boys' dormitories and she was left to contemplate how likely it was that they would get caught and whether McGonagall really would expel them both. It seemed unlikely, she had never heard of a Head Girl being expelled but she supposed that there was a first time for everything.

"What do you mean, jump?" Lily hissed out the window, impatient as she considered shutting the window on her stupid friend and going up to bed, the action of any logical and intelligent Head Girl. She had been sitting on the ledge, staring absent-mindedly out the window. She had expected James to return down the stairs like any sensible human being, holding two brooms. Instead he had made a uniquely Potter decision to bring one broom and to fly it out of the boys' dormitory and around the outside of Gryffindor Tower with the express intention of popping up right in front of her face and giving her the fright of her life. She had been forced to stifle a shout, and even now, several moments of arguing later her heart was still racing in a way that, she firmly told herself, had nothing to do with the confident and amused grin on James' face as he told her that he wanted her to jump out the window.

"I mean, jump... you know..." He proceeded to mime jumping, an action which almost caused her heart to stop altogether as he let go of the broom and it lurched downwards. She instinctively reached out for him, her heart jolting, and he grinned even wider, looking smug as he regained his hold and pulled the broom back upwards.

"Scared for me, Evans? I'm touched."

"I'm just scared that when they find your body, they'll think I pushed you."

"Well, you'd have opportunity, both of us alone, no witnesses..." he mused, unable to quell the smile entirely. She glared.

"I'd certainly have motive."

"What's that?" He frowned, faking a wounded look.

"The sheer irritation that comes from knowing you."

"Well, if that's a motive, there's plenty more people who would have motive, plus, I don't buy it... I think it would be a crime of passion."

"Whose passion would that be then?"

He stopped for a second, and Lily could feel her cheeks flushing, despite her best efforts at remaining distinctly dispassionate. He seemed to take pity on her.

"C'mon, Evans, just jump... I promise I'll catch you."

He looked sincere, and she had no doubt he would catch her, but there were a lot of things that she was still trying to quell, her doubts and her fears and her lack of confidence that a broom was built to carry the weight of two people. She voiced some of these doubts to him, and he, with a patience that surprised her, concisely and cheerfully dispelled them all.

"I'll tell them I kidnapped you, I am an excellent flyer so you're in safe hands, and have you ever heard of Theodore Turpington?"

"Who?"

"He played for the Caerphilly Catapults, years back, but he was about twice the size of me, and at least double our combined weight, and he flew a regulation broom, we'll be fine."

"Really?"

"Well, I mean, he had to have it replaced quite often, it's only wood after all and it would sort of...bend out of shape, apparently. Also, he used to do this move where he would grab a player by their head and sort of..." James mimed a violent twisting, his broom bucking as he spun around a little. Lily gasped again, to her own frustration, and James seemed to glow a little, a brilliant smile breaking out on his face. "Aw, it's sweet how concerned you are for me."

She rolled her eyes, but, when he held out his hand and beckoned her, she nodded determinedly and did her best to clamber up onto the ledge. She took James' hand, held her breath and took a large step forward, clutching James' hand as she realised that she was sitting on the broom, not falling through the air. She let go of his hand and immediately felt unsteady. She was sitting behind him, and, deciding that she would rather be safe than dignified, she wrapped her arms around his neck, hugging him close as she took another shaking breath.

"Shut up." She muttered into his ear, knowing how triumphant and smug he would inevitably be looking. "Hurry up and fly."

He wasted no time in complying, and soon Lily had completely forgotten about NEWTs, about rules and Orders, she couldn't have thought of a single thing to worry about in those moments. There was nothing else in the world except the icy air as it whipped through her hair, the warmth of James and the ring of his laughter in her ears. She had been right to be scared, James was clearly fearless when it came to flying and he didn't seem to notice that he had a passenger, swooping over tree tops and diving in between the branches without a second of warning. They seemed to twirl and twist through the air for hours, in their own little world, reassured by the sound of the others breathing and laughter as they swept over the Forest, across the grounds, seeing the windows of the castle sparkle like gems in stone as the moonlight struck them, the greenhouses shining up like pools of silver, and then the Lake. They swept over the lake, black as ink but with strange silver waves and ripples where the moonlight dripped down into it. James brought the broom so low that she thought he was going to take them underwater, it seemed that they couldn't possibly remain unharmed when they were diving at this pace towards that body of inky-black water, but at the last second, when Lily had already held her breath in preparation, he pulled up and the broom, protesting and straining against his hands, skittered along the surface, their feet dipping into the water and kicking up a spray. Soon they were speeding off again, barely above the surface, and Lily could breathe again, gulping in the icy air, feeling the thrill that must have been what drove Quidditch players to their brooms. She had known how it felt, she had even played Quidditch before, once when James had needed her and she couldn't refuse him, she had played and she had done well. She knew how good flying had felt, she could understand the appeal, but it had never been as wonderful as this. She had to struggle to keep herself from thinking about her arms, wound so tightly around James' neck. She wondered if she should let go, since it seemed so close, too close, but she knew that without a firm hold she would soon be swimming in the Lake and no matter how much she valued keeping her feelings under control, she valued warmth and not dying more. So she kept her arms wound around his neck, kept her body pressed close against his, and hoped that he couldn't feel through her skin, how hard she was struggling to hide any suggestion of her feelings towards him.

All too soon both of them were chilled to the bone and thoroughly exhausted, and they agreed that they should return to the Tower. They didn't speak a word a word to one another, which was easy enough since the wind was growing steadily louder as it whistled around the corners and turrets of the castle, and Lily was relieved. She felt certain that her face was a brilliant red, from the unfortunate combination of cold and embarrassment and she wasn't sure that she would have been able to think of anything to say. Slowly, skirting around McGonagall's study window, where a light still glowed in the arched window. Lily was surprised that she had any strength left in her legs but she was somehow able to haul herself up and back into the window that they had left ajar. She expected James to fly away, back up to the dormitory, but he followed her in. She wasn't sure if she would have preferred him to leave, it had been a lovely and very odd experience and she wasn't sure how you were supposed to act after it. She might have preferred it if he had left her to her thoughts. She was a thinker and she usually needed at least a day to really process every little thing that happened, especially when it involved James. Since they had grown closer, Lily had been surprised by how willing James seemed to be to give her this time, he rarely told her what he was thinking when she was panicking or over thinking, and some of her clearest insights into him had come from his friends, Sirius in particular. She wasn't really sure how to deal with James without a day or two to think and a long speech and possibly an argument with one of his friends, or worse, James himself.

She had to try, though, since he had pulled his broom in after him, and was pretending to look at the tail of the broom, studiously not looking at her. Perhaps he was just as disconcerted as she was, perhaps he was struggling with this in the same way that she was. She had to speak.

"Well, let's hope McGonagall wasn't star-gazing..."

He smiled, wrinkling his nose as he shook his head.

"I think we'd have heard about it by now if she'd seen us, and since I don't hear anyone barging up the stairs, I think we're safe."

"Yeah, probably... Might not be the best idea to push our luck though, so..." She gestured to the stairs towards her dormitory and James nodded, as though waking up from a dream.

"Good night!"

"Night!" She answered, and she knew that she could have left right then. She knew that she could have taken the stairs two at a time and been in bed before she even had time to think that she wished she had stayed. She knew that she could leave, and she knew that at almost any time before now she would have done exactly that without hesitation. She didn't want to do that anymore. Despite the fact that she knew it would be easier, she knew that she didn't want to do it. At some point, the scale had tipped from being in fear of her feelings, to being pulled towards them.

Lily wondered when the strength of her feelings for James had overwhelmed her fear of confrontation. She wondered when she had stopped trying to run away and started wanting to stay. She didn't know when, but she knew without a shadow of a doubt that she wanted to stay. She turned back to where James was still standing, leaning against his broom, looking oddly nonchalant as he stared fixedly at the twigs which were bound together at the end of his broom. She stared at him, trying to work out what he was waiting for. Did he expect her to speak? Was he waiting for her to do something? She suspected that he was simply trapped in the same inability to decide what to do as she was. She thought that perhaps he might do something when she didn't make a break for the stairs, when it became clear that she wasn't going to go, but she had been standing there for long enough for that to become clear and he wasn't even glancing up at her.

She knew, somehow, that this was a very important moment. She knew that this was a moment unlike any other. She had been in many moments where she had stood across from James, confused and uncertain as to what on earth was going on inside his mind, and felt that the future hinged on what she said and did next. There were moments in which the way the future headed seemed to turn on the head of a pin and Lily could see all the possible futures that might arise. This was different. Lily used to worry that she would read the situation wrong, see the wrong sign in James' eyes, and ruin everything. She worried that all the misunderstanding and the misinterpretation would make her say something or do something that would end in embarrassment or rejection.

Somehow, that fear never even crossed her mind. She stepped forward, one foot before the other, without faltering as she thought she might. Before she had even really reached the decision, she was standing in front of James, willing him to look at her, knowing that if he would only look up and look at her in that certain way, that she would know what it meant. This was the moment where everything would make sense and she would finally know what it meant when he looked at her like that.

He looked up.

"Your nose is all red." He said, his eyes trailing across her skin. He was so direct, in the way he looked at her, insistent and yet she knew that this moment was hers to lose. He wouldn't press her, she would be the one to say it, she was the one who could make this happen.

"Well, I wonder why..." She couldn't joke. She couldn't speak. She just needed him to meet her gaze. He was looking everywhere but in her eyes. Why wouldn't he look her in the eye? He looked back at his broom, but gestured to her hair.

"You've got... something in your hair." She reached up, instinctively to feel for whatever it was, but he shook his head and, with a hesitation that she had never seen in him before, he reached out and brushed his hand through her hair. She had left her hair down and had felt it whipping around her face as she and James had swooped around the grounds of Hogwarts. She might have suspected that a few twigs and leaves would have worked their way into her hair but it was only as James drew a leaf out of her puffed-up curls that she was reminded of how unkempt and ruffled she probably looked. It didn't exactly help her confidence, but neither did it knock it all that much. She was struggling to think about anything except how persistently James was refusing to look at her. She needed something to say, something to bring his attention unequivocally to her, to make him look at her the way that he had earlier. She knew that look would be the final thing to slot into alignment to make this moment really important. She just needed him to look. That meant finding the right words, and she had never been particularly good at thinking of the right words, timing had never been Lily's strong suit.

Then, she took a breath. She took a long, steady, only slightly shaking breath and thought about it, trying to collect together all of her scattered thoughts. She stopped trying to think about what she wanted to say, about the amazing, perfect combination of words that would illuminate everything. She stopped thinking about the perfect words, stopped trying to combine sentences to form a code that would unlock a future where everything was completely clear and certain.

She just thought about what she wanted to do. She stopped trying to guarantee certainty and decided just to do what she wanted.

She didn't wait for the look, but she stepped forward, too close to ignore, and just before she pressed her lips to his, she saw him look up, and look deep into her eyes. And there it was. The look. Her heart leapt.

And suddenly, she knew what it meant.


End file.
